Why YSK: Most hospitals send a summary bill (for example pharmacy: $5,000) hoping you’ll panic and just pay it. These are usually full of errors or huge markups. Before you pay anything, call the billing department and ask for an itemized bill with CPT codes. This will not only force a human to review it, but it also gives you the ability to spot BS. I tried this last year and the bill dropped by about 30% literally just because I asked, so don’t let them rip you off.
High prices are due to government regulation.
The consumer is saved by the government from problems caused by government regulation.
The consumer thanks for government for saving them from the problem the government created.
High prices are due to a lack of government regulations.
Pharma companies can set the prices according to what people are willing to pay. And people are willing to pay everything if it will save their lifes.
Pharma companies can set the prices to whatever they want because they have government protected monopolies over their products.
I thought generics were handled relatively similarly in the EU and the US, but apparently the US does grant a bunch of exclusivities, on top of patents.
However the biggest difference between those health systems still seems to be how providers bargain for lower prices.
In the US, insurances bargain for rebates. That means that if you buy a drug with insurance the insurance only pays a small percentage of the drug price. They are still allowed to demand copay on the list price. So often the insurance makes a profit in that transaction. But if you try to go around insurance you have to pay the full list price and will pay even more.
Over here, the universal healthcare providers bargain with the pharma companies to lower the list price. And with a much greater bargaining power to boot.
I disagree, that would be true if they were selling televisions or something, if you don’t like the price buy a different brand; but this isn’t possible on exclusive drugs. Hospitals have zero room negotiate by shopping around on a patented medication. Their literal only trick to lower prices is by government legislation.
Universal healthcare providers sometimes choose to cover drugs or treatments that have slightly worse outcomes instead. The treatment that was state of the art 10 years ago probably still works just fine.
Patents last 20 years. But most of that time, a drug is in trials.
Providers can also choose not to cover other drugs by the same company, if they refuse to budge. Not being able to sell any drugs across an entire country would be a big problem for companies.